FRANCES E. WILLARD. Typed Letter Signed to Miss Weems, Evanston, IL, 11 April 1891. 1 page, 11" x 8½", on Woman’s Christian Temperance Union letterhead.

The American reformer Frances Willard is best known for her work in the temperance movement; she headed the National Woman’s Christian Temperance Union from 1879 until her death in 1898 and also helped organize and lead the World’s WCTU from 1891 on. Willard also supported many other reforms, most notably woman suffrage, but also the peace movement, labor reform, and an array of social reforms.

Under Willard’s direction, the WCTU introduced many women to the public sphere, involving them in politics and reform activities for the first time. “As leader of the first mass organization of American women, Frances Willard made an unrivaled contribution toward the movement of women into public life ... encouraging women to espouse a set of goals and activities that led them into legislative chambers, union halls, and a host of professions ... [and securing] for women an increasingly powerful public role” (American National Biography Online).

Willard writes here to a descendant of “Parson” Weems, the Anglican clergyman whose biography of George Washington, originally published in 1800, was responsible for many popular stories about the first President, including the celebrated but apocryphal tale of his chopping down a cherry tree. Here Willard tells Weems’s great-niece, “I am glad to have met you, and I hope you and I may manage each to possess herself of a copy of your great-uncle’s life of Washington. To my sorrow and disappointment somebody has carried off the one that I so highly valued, and I am trying to find out where to secure another. If you are successful pray let me know.

“I am confident,” Willard continues, “if you would bring out a new edition there would be a demand for it. Do not let the matter lag, but follow it up through friends who can enlist the efforts of a good publisher, and I will tell you one, – John B. Alden of New York City. I believe he intends coming to see me to-day...from Chicago, and I will bring up this very subject.” She closes with “sincere affection,” and has signed, “Frances E. Willard.”

The letter is written on the vignette stationery of the “World’s and National Woman’s Christian Temperance Union,” which lists Willard as the President of each organization and states the object and methods of the groups.

A fold break is repaired on the verso; the letter is otherwise in very good condition. $275.00

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